Tell The Truth: This Is A Woman's World...

August 23, 2010

In the ever unfolding, never ending discussion of the "Mosque At Ground Zero", perhaps the best indication of just how much it's taken over this American moment is how the discussions that arise out of the controversy have become about nothing and everything, filled with hyperbole, bad metaphors and best of all... misremembered history.

I like to think of American as not so much poor at history as ahistorical - that is, our current events unfold in a vacuum where the past generally doesn't exist, except to confirm our generalized sense that our current moment is exceptional and the apex of our best moments (this is also why next season on American Idol is sure to be it's... best season ever!).

This evolving conception of reality makes for especially fascinating roles for America's historians, who often have to resume discussions of history from square one, re-explaining the most familiar events and reminding us that things weren't, well, that good, even recently. I find this, often, when talking about race issues, patiently explaining that Loving vs. Virginia happened in my lifetime, for instance.

Sunday's talk shows were filled pointless, unproductive discussions of the Mosque story, most often because basic facts and common matters of our history were either ignored, left uncorrected, or set up for debate as if there were more than one answer. Sadly, that was even the case when Daisy Khan, the woman who is helping to spearhead the Park51 project, appeared with Christiane Amanpour on Amanpour's still nascent approach to "This Week" on ABC... only to be followed by 4 of the usual suspects (Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt - Carville and Matalin for the senior set - along with Robert Reich and George Will) who spoke about a "mosque by Ground Zero" even though Ms. Khan had patiently explained the whole "Community Center" concept.

And that was the bright spot of the weekend - Amanpour, in fact, is already making Sundays vastly more interesting and productive as these things go - what with Fox's usual right side polemicists and David Gregory giving Rick Lazio wide berth to be especially dense, little fresh thinking was in evidence, and no real headway was made bridging the differences the proposed Center has revealed within our culture.

What prompted me to write about this, though, was tonight's moment with Lawrence O'Donnell covering Keith Olbermann on Countdown on MSNBC, talking to Time's editor for Muslim issues, asking if yesterday's ugly protest in New York - I didn't see it, and I suspect O'Donnell was overdoing his descriptions of it, as he does - were some sort of turning point, where ugly depictions of prejudice changed people's minds.

Set aside, for a moment, the idea the "ugly prejudice" is as American as apple pie (mine, not your mother's less interesting version ) - I did, after all, already talk about that - what struck me was O'Donnell's example of a moment in our history which was supposed to prove his point: the tensions around busing in Boston, which, according to O'Donnell, reached their apex when an angry crowd attempted to stab a black man with a flagpole, American flag still attached. O'Donnell then opined that after that... "people pulled back" and Boston "found its way" out of the tensions of busing.

I don't know the story... but O'Donnell is pretty much deliberately misremembering the story of busing... the tension ended, well, when Boston stopped forced busing of kids to integrate Boston schools. In other words, the racial tensions ended when everyone was allowed to return to their comfortably separate enclaves... which, by the way, is the story of Boston pretty much down to this day, where Roxbury and South Boston remain calmly separated, and Cambridge has all the educated upper class integration it can possibly hold.

If O'Donnell's point is that we'll get past this moment when we can shunt Muslims comfortably off to their own separate area... well, that seems like what the sensible opposition is arguing as well. Build "a mosque" or a community center... just somewhere else. But I think what O'Donnell had in mind was something else: the notion, that sunny alternate world of America, where we comfortably integrated, and everyone learned racial tolerance, by rejecting the segregated South.

It's a lovely story, one you hear frequently from older liberals... but that's not really how it happened. I lived the supposed "post integration" years in schooling... where I comfortably integrated many a classroom by being the only person of color in class, or one of three or four, all of us comfortably suburban and middle class, more like our white peers than the distant communities where most people of color lived. It wasn't awful... but it surely wasn't progress. In reality we haven't made much progress; our K-12 school districts are less integrated now than they were in the seventies, interracial marriage is still in the single percentages.

It's an obvious point really, the one about how we don't understand our own history, never mind reflect on it, never mind use our understanding of our history to inform our current debates; it's unlikely we'll start now to try and undo that. Without keeping a clear eye on our past, and understanding what's happened, and what hasn't... we can't make much progress... and I can't help but feel a little sad for that nice lady who spoke with Christiane Amanpour, calmly convinced that this would all work out if people just knew the facts. It's lovely to think we do the good things just because someone tells us how to be good... but that's not really how it happens... if it ever really happens.

April 27, 2010

One of the things that I find fascinating and frustrating with the Goldman Sachs mess as it unfolds is the disrespect of brilliance. From the discussion of "sophisticated" investors to the implications of genius within Goldman, smart is taking a beating.

It's hard being the smart one. I come from a smart family, I have a bunch of brilliant friends... and they, never mind me, have felt it. When you are the smart one in the room, all eyes are on you, and taking you down... can look pretty attractive.

I'm not sure being the best, or smartest Wall Street firm is necessarily desirable; that came clear to me back in the eighties, when Michael Milken's genius in selling junk bonds was supposed to make Drexel Burnham Lambert the star of the Street. Being brilliant (and thieving) undid Enron. Being the smart one, and having everyone notice it, seems to lead to trouble. That seems almost as clear watching the various Goldman execs testify today, representing the supposed smart guys of investment banking (who also seem to have been genius for, well, knowing how to hawk junk). Everyone seems to be waiting for a takedown.

On the other hand, there's a kind of "gotcha" element to the questioning that doesn't hold up. It's one thing to say that Goldman should have been more honest about its own holdings when trying to sell securities to others; it's another to ask why Goldman made money convincing other people to buy bad investments. It's rather - though not exactly - like hauling a Senior Buyer at Macy*s up to Congress and asking "why do you sell ugly dresses?" When you sell things... there is a point at which you are not the guilty party in your buyer's choices. And somewhere, somebody has to unload some ugly dresses. And someone winds up buying them.

This is why I think the arguments about "sophisticated" investors is kind of moot. That some banks and firms bought mortgage bonds all the time, and knew what they were doing, presumably... doesn't make them sophisticated, necessarily. The idea that mortgage bonds didn't get sold to "widows and orphans" but "sophisticated" investors doesn't really help anything. In the end, the enormous losses touched everyone; and the supposed sophistication of the financial firms betting on mortgage bonds has turned out, mostly, to be hash.

Goldman's big crime, in much of this... is using math. They did a lot of calculation of risk, and the worth of investments... and made decisions based on the numbers. Anyone, really, can do this. That Goldman did the math, and with their knowledge, did things to maximize profit is both the promise and the problem of capitalism. It's not, in itself, necessarily wrong. And it's not bad, still, to be smart.

But here's the thing: I think with knowledge comes power, and responsibility. Knowing things... you can't pretend not to know. And when you're the smart one... it's not nice to not share what you've learned. The problem with being the smart one in the room is that feeling that it shouldn't always fall on you to educate the rest. And yet, often, it does. Hoarding your knowledge, lording it over the others... will get you nailed. Every time. Or everytime. Or something.

April 09, 2010

The rise of blogging has coincided with - if not hastened - the death of objectivity; it's not that we can't step back and view things distantly and dispassionately... it's that we often don't want to try. It's hard to separate ourselves from the opinions and biases we bring to the table... so why bother trying at all?

Call me old fashioned (many do), or at least call me a product of journalism school... but I wish we'd keep trying, and trying harder.

I try to keep a sense of balance in what I write, and sometimes, yes, it drains a kind of passion from my work. I won't write screeds; I won't engage in namecalling or trying to tear people down or belittling their views. I know all of that can be fashionable and, yes, increase traffic... but it's not my style. And it doesn't, I still believe, get our dialogue, especially on politics, all that far.

I bring all of this up... because I want to explain why I don't write about certain things... like a lot about our north/south divide in this country that dates back to our founding, and which led to the Civil War. Writing about the South, and southerners... raises issues close to my family, my childhood... and all the biases I try, most of the time, to set aside.

And recently, we've been treated to reminders, yet again, that reinforce all my worst instincts.

With that in mind... I'm gonna take a stab at tryingto keep an open mind on these things. Knowing that many of you - friends, fans, and such - know me well enough and agree on many views I have... I expect you might be able to read between the lines... and realize what I'm trying not to say. If you're still wondering where my biases me lie... well, maybe if enough people get a discussion going in comments... I'll share those too.

Let's start with Virginia and that Confederate History Month proclamation.

March 19, 2010

There's bound to be a lot of breathless reporting in the next few days, full of heightened "will they or won't they" drama as the last few votes needed to pass the healthcare reform bill and reconciliation fixes bill in the House come together. Mostly, it will be theater of the first order, without much point: it seems increasingly clear that yet another razor thin majority can be cobbled together to force passge of the healthcare bill in the House, with the promise of at least a 51 vote majority in the Senate. Which means, from where I sit, that it's all over but the shouting... and while the shouting may have some entertainment value, it's not going to tell us very much about where we go from here.

With that in mind, I'm planning to focus on two things for now: the "oh my God, what have we done" look at what the bill might do (and more of what it doesn't)... and thinking about where we go from here, on healthcare, on other issues, and politically, especially with elections coming up in about 7 months. The time to argue about various provisions in the bill, to argue for or against passage of the bill, is passed - if indeed, such arguments mattered all along - and no one, really, can influence the coming result at this late moment.

So to get started, a few thoughts about what this whole process will be leaving in its wake: the wreckage of a year spent singlemindedly pursuing a narrow goal, with little regard for what was being hit along the way. It's now time to begin to face that actions have consequences, and it's the consequences that will be the story all too soon. Here are some consequences that have jumped out at me:

February 23, 2010

Bishop - the University of Alabama professor who shot up the Biology Department faculty meeting - puts an interesting wrinkle on both workplace shootings and on mass events at schools. And all of it complicates the usual left/right divides on gun incidents, school politics and the mindsets of shooters.

For me the case has felt unusually intimate: my Mother was Chair of her department for pretty much all of my youth, and ran an undergraduate program until she retired. The ins and outs of tenure process, the dynamics and politics of faculty relations and the occasionally unpleasant employment dilemmas... all of these were part of my growing up experience, and inform a lot of views on higher education as well as my approach to interpersonal dynamics. The idea of a disgruntled faculty member resorting to violence never seemed to me to be an especially farfetched possibility.

And when Amy Bishop's arrest was announced - before anyone knew who the exact victims were - I said to my Mom, "she shot the Chair of the Department. And the head of her tenure committee." And she did.

November 12, 2009

Nothing I write, nothing others have written, can really convey the power of Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.

Which may be why I have been struggling since Saturday to write a review of it... or indeed, to write almost anything.

Precious is astonishing, overwhelming, powerful, brilliant... and heartbreakingly sad, unbelievably hopeful, and like nothing that's come before... and yet, is a completely timeless, archetypal story of survival through adversity. All that, and it forces you to see what we try, very hard, not to see, in our lives, our cities, and our culture.

Set, ostensibly, in 1987, Precious is the story of Precious Jones, a 16 year old African American woman living in poverty. She likes school, but is barely getting by, when it is discovered that she is pregnant... with her second child. All of which is announced to us in about the first 5 minutes.

Finding out how Precious got to this point, and what she does beyond it, is the story of the film. The film is frank, often brutal in depicting the painful home life Precious has with her mother, who is physically, verbally and emotionally abusive. In the dark, run down apartment they share, you can see how Precious holds herself tightly within, because to reveal herself is to invite more abuse. And you can see - via brilliant, beautiful realizations of her dreams and fantasies - how much Precious holds within that is vibrant, alive and ready to break free.

The opportunity Precious has to break free comes when she is transferred to an alternative school for at risk women, a small class of about 8, led by an impassioned, caring teacher. Through her lessons, Precious learns to read, to express herself (they have to write a daily journal), and to share her hopes and dreams, fears and mistreatments.

If education is the window of opportunity it is, as is often observed, also dangerous: as Precious learns to feel better about herself and to realize that she can achieve the things she wants, it becomes impossible for her mother to maintain the level of control necessary to keep Precious servile and fearful. And when Precious reveals, in heartbreaking detail, how she got to be 16 with two children to her social worker, her whole world is up-ended, and the cycle of abuse comes to a powerful, fury-filled climax.

Created in the eighties at the height of the "welfare queen" and Reagan era discussions of reforming welfare and breaking "cycles of dependency", Sapphire's novel takes on a number of preconceptions and refuses to provide easy, rote answers; the reality of life on welfare and in poverty is complicated, the life situations painful and complex (which is why, though the film visually straddles the present and the recent past, the 1987 setting is so necessary: welfare as we knew it is not we have now).

Director Lee Daniels great achievement, then, is to let those larger societal observations come through without having them take over the story. However one feels about the "cycle of dependency" or how one views the system of welfare, Precious reminds us at every turn that this is, ultimately, a human story where the larger implications mean nothing if we can't see or feel the people in question.

Daniels real strength as a director lies in his work with actors, and here he mixes the work of newcomers, veterans and unexpected celbrities and gets amazing work out of everyone. That Mariah Carey is virtually unrecognizable as the social worker Precious goes to and ultimately reveals her story to is by itself breathtaking; or Lenny Kravitz taking a part that ten years would have belonged to Jeffrey Wright and shows that he too has the depth and sensitivity to be the lone, decent male in the proceedings. And who knew Sherri Shepherd - that's right, on The View - was such a capable, naturalistic performer.

But Precious hinges on three central performances, all of them brilliant, yet different. Paula Patton imbues the teacher, Blue Rain, with such passion and sense of purpose that she manages to override notions that the part is, at times, almost too good to be true. We do not get enough images of teachers who honor their profession; we need more of it.

As Precious, Gabourey Sidibe more than holds her own opposite her remarkable costars, all the more amazing for a newcomer and nonprofessional. In the beginning her impassive, defiant look seems to define all that we can know about Precious; yet, by degrees, we begin to see the difference between the armor Precious uses to protect herself in the world and the strength and inner resilience she has to carry her through. It's all there in Sidibe, and because of her size, and her dark skin, she also serves to challenge our notions of how, even now, we marginalize some of the black experience - never mind our weightist obsessions with showing only thin people - in favor of other, easier, views that fit our cultural expectations.

Even more, though, the film's real force of nature is Mo'Nique, as Mary, the mother who is, by turns, monstrous, frightening, and intensely vulnerable. To me, her performance is something on the level of Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (or Bette Davis in The Little Foxes), harking back to the golden age actresses and their ability to play such fascinating, monstrous characters because of their ability to hold us, riveted, in their fierce, fearsome star power. That Mo'Nique trusts Daniels enough to "drab down" her usual star qualities, and disappear into Mary's selfish, childlike demanding nature is remarkable; but the real power is how, in the end, she delivers the monologue that brings together all we have seen and fills in the blanks that take the story to its final, desperate, heartbreaking yet necessary conclusion.

In the four days since I've seen it, Precious has come back to me, every day, refusing to let go. Even now, I can weep for the girl and her pain, or smile at her determination and refusal to be, literally, held down. By degrees, the film continues to reveal itself, to make me think, and to see. To realize my own privileges, to recognize that I have been blessed, as most of us are, with a life nowhere near so challenging and a family that is there to love and support me. Gratitude, and hope for our humanity, really, is this film's unexpected gift. Precious has made me think about the world I - we - try to shut out, explain away, talk our way around... so that we don't have to face the hardships, the desperation... but also miss the strength and determination that drives someone to become the best person they can be.

Precious could, easily, give into simply making the audience suffer and feel bad for all that we don't do, as a society, even now, for those in need. Instead, it let's us see that, even in the darkest moments and most difficult lives, there are things that can lift indviduals out of despair, if only they will try. And no, the film is not perfect - at times seeming unrealistic, visually held back by what was clearly a very low, tight budget - but for what it is, what it accomplishes, and what it reveals... Precious is nothing short of a miracle, a revelation. It demands to be seen. And I have to demand that you see it.

October 01, 2009

(This post was inspired by a post by my friend Red over at her Poverty
Blog at Change.org... and expands - widely - on a comment I put up over
there.)

Every so often, the left side of the blogosphere gets caught up in discussing the plight of American workers - how bad we have it, how much disparity we have in income (which is what happens when CEOs make multimillion salaries while hourly workers can get less than minimum wage), how bad our benefits are (health reform!), and how, compared to many countries, we get very little time off for vacation or illness.

I always have mixed feelings about these
things - and the way America differs from other countries when it comes
to notions of vacation and sick time. I think a lot of this is tied to
our work ethic, and it's worth noting that people who have time
available, often, rarely take it. And that, for many, the problem isn't
time, and for businesses the problem isn't money... it's the question
of who can do the task of another when that person needs to take time
off.

The reason for problems in retail and food service around sick time
is about carrying extra bodies - especially now, in a recession, when
most retail operations are running close to the bone on staff, the
question of a person calling out sick can mean havoc for those who are
left. I've worked in department and specialty stores for a long time,
and currently for Starbucks. Losing a worker to an illness or a long
term outage of another sort deeply affects our ability to be fully
staffed, and puts enormous pressure on the rest of our team... and
ultimately, what suffers is our ability to provide good service, which
leads to a bad customer experience... which leads to loss of business
("I tried to buy a blouse at Macy*s... and there were no cashiers!").
And so, very often, conscientious workers, even with illness, tend to
show up. Sick time, in these cases, isn't necessarily all of the issue.

I also spent time as a worker in corporate HR, at a company with
generous vacation, sick and maternity benefits (which tried,
especially, to be family friendly, with sensitive policies for moms and
dads). And, as often as not, our problems were as much about workers
refusing to take time as it was workers who took too much - and a lot
of time spent coaching managers that they could not set unreasonable
time expectations for their teams based on their own driven workstyles.
Even so, for many workers, there was still a problem of coverage and
replace-ability; losing an assistant for days or weeks was simply
putting additional work on other assistants with full workloads. But
the alternative - carrying extra staff - was not an option, either (and
an unfamiliar, expensive temp also rarely afforded a good solution).

My point isn't to suggest that as a nation, we don't have a problem
with sick time that deserves to be addressed; my point is that we have
a complicated set of cultural norms and expectations around work in
America that drive our policies and processes. Government mandates for
sick time benefits (which will be hard to get past business lobbying
anyway) do not guarantee that sick time will get taken, or that workers
will feel less pressured to show up, even when ill. Changing that
requires a longer, broader, cultural conversation around work, and our
lives outside of work. We really don't have that conversation very
much, I find. And we could certainly use it.

But I think to have that conversation, we also need to see a new paradigm develop, on the left, about how we talk about working, and workers. Since last year's election, with progressive ideas enjoying a fresh momentum, the discussion around labor issues has returned... well, to Big Labor. Despite the fact that the majority of Americans are no longer unionized - and many can't, or won't, wind up being unionized - the discussion of labor issues starts, on the left, often, from a place where unions are the first, best option. That protecting workers works best when the workers are united. It's lovely thinking... it's just not our reality.

After working on a Congressional campaign, my campaign manager boss wanted to run for City Council - which she did, ultimately, and won - and she started by sitting with her key staff and talking about what a run would take. One thing that came up, because she felt strongly about it, was that she wanted to be critical of the teacher's union, one of the most powerful in New York. And, ever the contrarian, I raised the traditional lefty point: how do you win by pissing off union workers? How can you say unions are bad?

As I said, she ran, and won... and she remained a vocal critic on education, and especially of the teacher's union... which, over time, managed to marginalize her and eventually get her off the Council. Which kind of proved my point. But over time... I've come to see hers.

I am not anti-union - no one, I think, can seriously claim true liberal or progressive thinking without supporting the notion of organized workers - but I think how we think about labor, labor organzing, and our working lives in America, has to change among liberals, and soon... or we can't make the kind of progress that needs, desperately, to be made. We need, as progressives, to understand and admit that the interests of all workers and the interests of organized labor are not always the same. And we need to face up to the business realities that sometimes union rules and requirments can work against good business practices. And that includes popular unions like the Teachers, auto workers, and healthcare workers. The tension between what's good for unions, and what's good for other workers needs to be brought out into the open and examined... or we can't make further progress. For anyone.

And no issue reflects those tensions - our old labor thinking not fitting our current problems - than on questions like vacation and sick leave and other worker benefits. Thinking, simply, in terms of a government mandate to require the availability of time off won't get it done. Business interests are arrayed against it; but just as importantly, as I mentioned, the work we do, and how we think about it, colors how we approach using the benefits we already have, and what benefits we expect. More vacation time... will not mean more vacations. More sick time will not reduce our public health problems. Not until we seriously talk, in the culture, about a different idea for our work ethics, and a different approach to our working lives.

Health reform is another key example - unions, for instance, are not necessarily thrilled about plans to tax so called "Cadillac plans" that offer better benefits at increased cost; often because unions have managed to negotiate such plans for their workers (ah, being united might pay off in benefits? Who knew?). But more centrally, the problems we have with healthcare stem from 60 plus years of tying our healthcare benefits to our working lives; and perhaps the most problematic element of "reform" under discussion - and the least thought through - is that many of the reforms under discussion would further solidify, rather than reduce, our links between healthcare and employment. And in part, it's seeing that we link healthcare and employment... because we think pretty much everyone can, and should, be employed.

It fascinates me - much as it has my mother, in all of her professional life - that so much of who we are as Americans (that is, our working lives and how much who we are is tied up in what we do) is often talked about so little, and rarely with a clear eye for the work we actually do. We continue to talk, often, about work as if we are a country dominated by manufacturing and farming... when we are in fact a country dominated by service work, retail jobs, and white collar professions. We are more specialized, more productive because of technological advancements... and less able to replace one another mindlessly as we were on assembly lines and in the harvest (we think, in fact, of retail service work as mindless... when it's not). Until we can refocus our discussion of work on the work we actually do... I don't think we can figure out how to reshape our working lives. And more to the point... I'm not sure, culturally, that we actually want that. Until we talk about it, though... we'll never know.

September 05, 2009

What's amazing (to me anyway) about the "speech to schoolkids" flap is that we're trying to take this seriously. The crazy assertions about a "socialist agenda", the cries of "indoctrination".... all of this is so thoroughly absurd, and yet somehow, there has to be some attempt to "respect" an alternative viewpoint.

Bollocks. Though I suspect that with each new addition to the crazy train, it's becoming clearer that this stuff is just getting more and more "out there", we've got to move more firmly to draw a line, and realize that it's been crossed. And stop pretending that there's anything here worth debating. That means letting go of reflexive defensiveness when crazy conservatives use hot button words like "socialist" and "fascist" to throw a generalized label over their opponents. It means ignoring and marginalizing foolish activities like bizarre boycotts, misplaced "marches", dopey "tea parties" and the like. Don't treat these absurdities as news, don't give the sensationalists the attention they crave... and when you do talk about them, be clear about what they are: fringe elements and outliers, whose bizarre assertions aren't just fabricated... they're not worth serious consideration. Of any sort.

Look, never mind the part about Obama selling some sort of blinkered "socialism" as if liberal ideas were dirty and foreign; consider the absurd notions of "indoctrination" as if any kid could be thoroughly brainwashed by a speech. On television. By some old guy in a suit. This isn't how indoctrination works. And indeed, the more salient point is... indoctrination generally doesn't work. And Americans - who have culturally enshrined a notion of free thinking, questioning authority and challenging symbols of status quo and the establishment - really have neither the patience, nor the discipline, for it.

I think the left has three main foibles that let this stuff gain traction - a decided willingness to give everyone a chance to share, in a forum of mutual respect; a reverence for the right to dissent; and a fear of seeming, well, too authoritarian and rigid. Add those things up, and you get an amazing breadth of room for crazzy* cons to offer up their best outlandishness, without evidence, or grounding in reality, or really, any connection to reality at all.

The day may not be today... but I think the national tolerance for this kind of asinine pointlessness is evaporating quickly, and for myself, I think it's time to say it - there's no reason to pay attention to this craziness, to take it seriously, or give it any place in a reasoned discourse. It's well past time for thinking, reasonable people to stop staring, stop arguing, and stop pretending. There's nothing to see here. Really... nothing. Let's get off the crazzy* train - and let it fly off the rails all on its own.

(* Years ago, my J in B would sing me Patsy Cline's "Crazy", but mispronounce it as "Crazzy" - i.e. wthout the long "a" sound - and for me, anyway, it became a shorthand way to refer to the "crazier than crazy" people and events one runs into in every day life. So no, unlike my usual misspellings... it's not a typo. It's deliberate.)

August 02, 2009

The blogosphere, I expect, will all have to weigh in on Michael Pollan's musings in this week's New York Times Magazine - it's a thin week, and there's little else to do at the beach house or the country house... or wherever upscale yuppies drive to just outside the city. Myself, I think Pollan's finally given himself away, and offered little in the way of useful rethinking about food and cooking.

Up to a point. I think my main objection to Pollan's sour take - that we don't cook anymnore and the culture encourages us not to - is just that so many of us try to fight against just such certainties. I like to cok, I always have. When I was 12, I had to fight the traditional gendered expectations of my junior high teachers and Administration to get a place taking Home Economics, rather than shop. I wasn't likely to do carprentry... but I did have to cook weekly meals for my family since my mom worked.

Although I'm not a huge cooking fan of Julia Child (I've never made a French Chef recipe, and I tend to agree the kind of French cooking she espoused is somewhat passe), I watched the show and I agree with the assessment of others - and the coming Julie and Julia movie - that The French Chef made you feel good about wanting to cook. Listening to Julia Child's passion and her enthusiasm... who didn't want to at least try?

At the same time, though, I think Pollan is laboring through some dull preconceptions that one doesn't have to share - his sense that Child pushed creative cooking on the "Feminine Mystique" generation of early second wave feminists feels forced. I don't remember it that way, and I think, as both my mom and her sister noted, the complexities of cooking in their day was as much involved as any sense of dawning feminism; and Pollan undercuts himself by admitting that most of us, not just women, and not even just women working outside the home, take much less time to cook than we have in the past.

I agree with Pollan that the Food Channel has moved away from celebrating cooking to celebrating eating, with similarly disastrous results; and that its selling of "celebrity chefs" is weird and off putting (though I think his generous descriptions of Emeril Legasse as genius are a stretch; I've eaten in Emeril's restaurants, and they're okay, but not overwhelming). But who's watching? As much as my foodie friends know the Food Network shows... they're cooking lives come from other sources and inspirations. Pollan says nothing about the interest in cookbooks or the success of an outlet like Williams Sonoma, key indicators of the culture of cooking, I think, is still out there.

Yes, we have a culture focused on quick cook colutions, fast eating, and often unhealthy options. But, as Pollan is quick to lecture us, we have a corporate dominated food production complex to congratulate for that, and while all the negative aspects need to be shown, it's also the case that Pollan's arguments for local growing and sustainable food policies don't sell well, partly because they seem superior and classist. We didn't all grow up in a home where Mom stayed home, watched the French Chef and followed Julia Child. And our food realities kind of have to accept that, like it or not, we have a culture bias to seeing cooking as cumbersome and time consuming... and a function, often, of class.

Fixing our food issues- getting better agricultural policies, helping to encourage more people to cook their own food (it actually helps diet) more and with more natural ingredients - are important, and worthwhile goals. How we do it, I think, is indeed embodied in Julia Child - it's passionate, it's positive, and it leaves room for people to mess up and go their own way. That Pollan can't quite see that - or can't quiet figure out how to encourage it - is, I think, indicative of where the "food movement" is going wrong. And as long as he's here to harangue us about not being good enough... I suspect a ;lot of people will just want to stay on the couch that much longer, eating it.

February 22, 2009

When I started my idea of an "Awesome Award", it was kind of a lark (and a way to celebrate a pal)... but I've actually kept an eye out for additional posts that meet my own, personalized, criteria for awesome posts that really sum up a particular issue. And I found one! Via Ezra (and a reminder that he tries to be one of the good guys), this, well, awesome post from Jessica at Feministing, taking on the whole idea of a "hookup culture" and pointing out that it's really just more "dirty girl" propaganda from the far right:

And these books are just the latest in a long line of
publications and reports - almost all put out by conservative
organizations (and I'll explain why that's important in a minute)
saying that hooking up is the most dire issue facing young American
women today.

A short publication - a little booklet meant for college women -
put out by the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, for example, says
that the more sexual partners women have, the more depressed they are
and that young women who have sex are just going to end up sad, lonely
dropouts with HPV.

(I'm paraphrasing obviously, but this is in fact what was written in the publication.)

The booklet hinges so much on scare tactics that it goes as far as to wish STDs on fictional characters.

"It's easy to forget, but the characters on Grey's Anatomy and
Sex in the City are not real. In real life, Meredith and Carrie would
have warts or herpes. They'd likely be on Prozac or Zoloft."

Just as an aside, I think it's really telling that a lot of
anti-hook up books rely on anecdotes from TV or the movies - characters
that are totally fictional - because they often can't find real life
examples for their scare tactics.